


gansey. that's all there is.

by greywarenspeaks (alloftimeandspace)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Dead Welsh Kings (Raven Cycle), Inspired by the Raven Cycle, My First Raven Cycle Fic, POV Richard Gansey III, Pre-Raven Cycle, Richard Gansey III's Death, Richard Gansey III-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22089565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloftimeandspace/pseuds/greywarenspeaks
Summary: before there was Henrietta, there was the hope that Welsh blood had been the thing to save him.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	gansey. that's all there is.

**Author's Note:**

> if you like my work, talk to me on tumblr at brighteyesandblacklights.tumblr.com
> 
> thanks for reading!

Richard Campbell Gansey III was a perfect before-and-after. This fact was simple, once explained. The facts did not change, though the listener’s perception of the story was liable to at any given moment. The facts were this: Richard Campbell Gansey III had been stung to death by hornets. Richard Campbell Gansey III had lived, because of a long-dead Welsh king, because his death aligned with a magical heartbeat beneath the surface of rich Virgina soil. Richard Campbell Gansey III’s death had been a bargain that he didn’t remember making. Once one agreed to believe in the impossible, at face-value, the rest fell easily into place. 

The _why_ was what kept him listless at night. Between discovering the legend of Glendower and discovering the town at the heart of it all, there was the nagging idea, once thought, not to be un-thought, that the answer lay in his blood-line. An easy explanation; too easy, perhaps. His survival as a negotiation for the Welsh blood that might have pumped through his veins. Before there was an endless cardboard recreation of Henrietta on the floor of an abandoned factory-turned-apartment, before he had even heard of Henrietta at all, there was this: Richard Campbell Gansey III, of a long and proud heritage, as all of the Gansey’s, stumbling, bleary-eyed, through ancestry documents, family trees, following another mystical line, tracing his lineage. 

A sea away from his Virginia roots, he embarked on two quests, quests only because they were his, and this was unchangeably who he was. One, a daylight search; an innumerable hike through the mountains of a drizzling, lush landscape, grey in sky and not in spirit. One, this: a boy, alone in a borrowed room, with the grand posture of a Welsh king, even hunched, as he was, over a laptop in the borrowed kitchenette. A boy, lamp-lit and screen-glowing, wire-frames askew, jaw barely shadowed, shirt and fingers ink-stained. A wall of research, behind the boy, pinned to borrowed wallpaper. Scribbled notes in alternating ink and pencil, across a notebook, loose pages, and scribbled on the mirrors in spastic dry-erase marker. A boy, sleepless and frantic, without quite knowing why. 

He began with the basics. The name Gansey carried many burdens, most noble, some unreliable. 

_Richard: Germanic given name meaning “strong in rule”._

_Campbell: a Scottish/Irish surname, derived from the Gaelic for cam ("crooked") and beul ("mouth")._

_Gansey (n), UK: a thick knitted sweater made of wool, of a type typically worn by fishermen._

None seemed conclusively Welsh-descendant, but this was far from the moment at which he gave up hope, if ever. Richard Campbell Gansey III was, if anything, an abuser of hope. Hope could be run ragged for a long time, before it is necessary to let go of it. This was merely the leaping ground, from the cliff top to the roaring sea below. Richard Campbell Gansey III was an excellent swimmer. 

Months of sleeplessness dedicated themselves to the task, tracing the spindly branches up, up through the eras, the combination of lives that resulted in the life and death, before and after of the young king seated before them all, spread across a single room, piecing decades together like a child’s jigsaw. How unlikely that any of us should be born at all, he began to think. This was more hopeful than discouraging, and he trudged on. 

For most people, it would have been impossible to trace a lineage back so far, to an age before ages, that even history got wrong, and admitted as such. Most people were not Richard Campbell Gansey III. Most people could not make the calls that he had, to the museums and genealogy libraries and government census bureaus and UK universities that he had. Most people did not command the room, or the telephone line, whichever was most prevalent, the way that the young king did. In his grogginess, it seemed even the scattered trees across the walls would follow him anywhere. 

The triumphant moment came pre-dawn, on an incredibly unremarkable day, and was short lived. An email, of all things, from a tiny genealogical society on the British coast. The email said many things, but what it might have said, was no, and only that. Or, “you are descended from a fisherman, Richard Campbell Gansey III, and not a Welsh king. We can prove it.” 

Richard Campbell Gansey III abandoned the family trees, the records and documents and certificates, the unrelated artifacts against the far wall of the room, and most of all, his colleague in the next room. Richard Campbell Gansey III was on an international flight to Virginia as the sun began to rise over the British coast, as his fisherman fore-father might have once seen. It had been a wild hope. It had been a waste of time. 

Helen picked him up at the airport, by his request, in his sleek Suburban. She passed a travel coffee across the dash and navigated skillfully for home, where he ate a charming breakfast at a charming table, overlooking a charmingly familiar Virginia countryside. His thoughts turned to the ley line in Virginia, and he knew, like he had known from the beginning, that he must follow it. He spoke aloud, not about this, but instead, about his mother’s political career. She was charmed. Richard Campbell Gansey II read from the newspaper. Helen chattered about an upcoming gala. It was life, as expected. 

No one called him Richard Gansey III. 

Gansey. That’s all there is.


End file.
